Thanks "Top"-- Anybody who lives in my favorite State South of the mason-Dixon line (you can thank Hoagie Carmichael for that if you;d care to) is Aces with me. I make all kinds of typos, but as I am not a writer nor looking to be one, and I don't understand the spell-checky-checky thing on my daughter's Dell anyway- so that's water under the bridge.
A few of the "nattering Nabobs of NumbNuttedNess" here ripped me a new one, or tried to anyway, they quoted Teddy Roosevelt and his acerbic comments on being a critic instead of a 'doer"- Wrong- I was NOT criticizing your splendid article, one of the best I have ever read yet on my beloved "Elsies"- But as a former friend from the Pregnant Gophers Conservation Affliction one wrote me in a private e-mail, and I quote: "Francis, you have a mind like a steel trap" and I took that as a great compliment, knowing full well that if my highly observant granddad and also my father were amongst the living, they'd give me a pat on the back for that-
I learned a great deal from your first rate article- as I had carefully examined a nice unaltered O grade 12- DT EXT- 28" M&F- a basic "Nuts and Bolts" field Smith 12 bore- but saw NO dimples on the muzzles, as evident on both my Grade 2, grade 2E and Grade 3E 12 Smiths- But the barrels taped at 28" even- now I know why that is so, and the fotos showing that were worth the high price of the magazine, at least to me.
I bought it for two reasons, as I am usually a bit 'tight" with my dinero-- Your article, and also the one about the French Greener and the fotos and details of Ernest Hemingway in Paris were the raison d'etre!! My gals gave me a new book about Hemingway's early years in Paris with new bride Hadley Elisabeth Richardson-- I have an extensive Hemingway library, including many personal family letters and photos and articles- a neighbor lady is related to the Dillard family, the ones who owned the Blacksmith shop and Livery in Horton's Bay, MI near Walloon Lake and the Windemeer cottage- I also 'lucked into" two bits of Hemingway "treasure perhaps" (1) A signed copy of his prize winning novel "The Old Man and The Sea" enscribed To Bumby- With Love as Ever- Papa- and I also have a framed picture of Lady Duff Twesden and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (the later a Southern belle) sitting outside at a small cafe table in Paris 1924-- Lady Duff was the protagonist for "Lady Brett" in his first novel "The Sun Also Rises"--, just as socialite Jane mason was the protagonist for the character Margot Macomber- in what i consider to have been his best ever short story--
Anyway, this was my first purchase and reading of DGJ-- lotsa great fotos and stuff I can't afford- the Optomist grade Uncle Dan leFever with the single trigger shown in the Steve Barnett is also as desirable as the A-2 with the Monogram barrels you described so well- Both are, indeed, "Crown jewels of doublegundom"!!
